Water ripples / waves on the surface of an object
I got a pretty decent result by using an ocean modifier and a displace modifier.



I find that icospheres lend themselves to displacement better than UV spheres due to the more even geometry.  So for the above example I used an icosphere with a subsurf modifier to give it some more geometry.

The basic wavy fluid look is produced with an ocean modifier.  The key settings to change are to set it do Displace the geometry instead of regenerate, increase the Choppiness and Scale, and adjust the Size to fit the scale of your scene.

Here are the settings I used (for a sphere with a diameter of 25 Blender Units):



The smaller bumps are created by a normal displacement modifier.  It is placed after the ocean modifier in the modifier stack and uses Global mapping coordinates for a clouds noise texture.  This is so that as the geometry is moved around by the ocean modifier, the displacement texture changes too.  Make sure the noise texture is set to a high Depth value as well to get a more detailed look.